


And I Decline

by blackcatbone



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, POV Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-04 01:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13354026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackcatbone/pseuds/blackcatbone
Summary: The world ends and Shiro escapes into the desert, where he encounters four rather strange individuals. After that, things gradually stop making sense.





	And I Decline

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Warnings for mild body horror and implied zombie apocalypse.  
> 2) Thanks to [Rhi](http://thebonepilot.tumblr.com/) for beta reading this nonsense and helping me flesh it out.

He flees into the desert. It does not seem like a good idea at the time. It seems like even less of a good idea later, when his running slows to walking. Later still, when he finally collapses, he decides that it was an entirely bad idea.

Lying on his back, sand settling on his parched lips, he blinks feebly at the sky above.

-

At the sound of voices, he prises his eyelids apart. Staring straight up, he can just about make out four blurry figures standing over him, blocking out the cruel sun.

"-looks half-dead," one is muttering.

"Well, if we leave it here, the coyotes are sure to finish the job," another comments without emotion.

"No way!" the third quickly responds. "Finders keepers! Those coyotes can go get their dinner someplace else!"

A fourth sighs wearily. "If you're going to keep it, then we'd better get it back to the cabin."

He finds himself being lifted up then, cradled in strong arms. After a few steps, he passes out.

-

He's not sure how long he's been lying on the couch in this cabin. He did try to count the days at first, but slipping in and out of consciousness he quickly lost count. Sometimes the daylight seems endless, other times the night seems to last forever.

By all rights he should be dead. Or worse, turned. It's been long enough, he's sure of that. His right arm feels numb, distanced from his living body, but he can see the bite festering on it. A map of his veins is inked out in black along the length of the limb. The rest of him feels hot, eternally locked in the heat of battle with the infection.

Honestly, he has no idea why he isn't dead.

His rescuers - or captors - are an unlikely quartet. By all appearances they look like teenagers, but he's not at all sure they're actually human.

Lance lounges off to his right, in an armchair with a white bedsheet draped over it, stretching a black elastic hair band between his long fingers. Every so often he accidentally flicks it across the room and has to get up to go and fetch it. He's been doing this for hours. Or maybe it's days? Shiro is unsure. Lance is the one who seems to have 'claimed' him, and as such is weirdly protective of his prize. He complains loudly whenever one of the others gets what he deems to be 'too close'. Shiro's memory of events since he arrived at the cabin is hazy at best. He doesn't remember being washed or undressed, but he's no longer covered in sand and the soft black cotton t-shirt he's wearing smells clean and fresh.

Lingering in the doorway to the kitchen is Keith, picking at a notch in the wooden doorframe. He's been disappearing and reappearing at irregular intervals during the time that Lance has been in the room. Occasionally he looks up at Shiro and seems to study him for a few beats before pulling a face: sticking out his tongue, dragging down his eyelid with his middle finger. Sometimes he even smiles. If Lance happens to catch him looking, his eyes will narrow suspiciously and he'll move to shoo him away. But Keith is gone again before he's even made it out of his chair.

From his position on the couch, Shiro can see into the cabin's little kitchen, where the appropriately named Hunk is fussing over a stove that is too big, too black and too shiny for its humble surroundings. Hunk is the big guy that carried him to the cabin, Shiro now knows. He always seems to be cooking, but Shiro has no idea where he's getting the food from. They're miles from anywhere and it's not like anyone's delivering any more now that civilisation has collapsed. Shiro's never seen or heard any indication of any of the four leaving the cabin to go anywhere. Yet there are fresh eggs for breakfast every morning. Hunk will count them, sometimes repeatedly. He does that a lot: counting. He's been using the little electronic scale sitting on the countertop to weigh rice for what feels like an eternity. He never seems happy with the readings he gets.

The little one sitting on a beanbag (that might once have been white but is now a dirty grey) to the left of the couch is Pidge. She has an old laptop computer, encased in translucent white and green plastic, balanced on her legs. She alternates between typing furiously and sitting absolutely still, staring blankly at the screen. The sickly glow from it reflects off her glasses and obscures her eyes, making her seem expressionless, almost robotic. She's quiet most of the time, watching the others with a sort of bored dismay and occasionally shaking her head. When she does talk it's like a woollen scarf unravelling; like she's trying to explain away chaos into order simply by bombarding it with statements. Her hand feels cold against Shiro's feverish skin when she touches him.

-

He is now strong enough to get up and move around the cabin for short periods, though he hasn't yet ventured beyond the threshold of the front door. There's a black rubber doormat on the floor just inside the door, with a picture of an alien head and the words 'WELCOME ALL SPECIES' in green on it. The alien head, he has discovered, glows in the dark. Next to the mat, below a row of empty coat-hooks, a red Yamasaki motorcycle rests against the wall. He has no idea why the bike is indoors. Surely it had to have been quite tough to manoeuvre it into a space as small as the little alcove surrounding the door.

The physical layout of the inside of the cabin does not seem to make any sense. To him, it appears to consist of just the big central living space, where the couch is, and the kitchen, with the two connected by a framed opening with no door. He has still not heard or seen the front door open or close, yet the Four seem to appear and disappear all the time. Is there a bathroom somewhere? He's never seen it, but also never needed it.

Now, braced against the doorframe in the entryway between the living room and kitchen, he watches as Hunk prepares yet another meal. He is now certain that the Four aren't human. And what's more, he thinks he's finally figured out _who_ they are. It makes sense, what with the world ending and all.

Lance is Conquest. Anything he sets eyes on, he considers his by default. And he's quick to defend what's his against anyone who tries to take it. Or that he thinks might be about to try and take it.

"Hey, don't touch that!" he yells now, striding past Shiro. "That distance away you are right now? That's good, stay right there."

The comments are directed towards Keith, as is often the case. He's sitting up on the kitchen counter, legs crossed at the ankle, about half a foot away from a coffee mug decorated with images of assorted cats.

Keith blinks innocently and very slowly extends a finger to point at the mug, as if to say 'This?'

Lance's nostrils flare, like a bull preparing to charge. 

Keith is War. He's constantly chipping away at the others, little by little, sowing the seeds of conflict and then stepping back to watch the squabbles sprout up in his wake.

As Shiro watches, he carefully pushes one of the eggs sitting on the counter over the edge. It hits the tiled floor and smashes.

"Lance!" he exclaims quickly.

"Aw, Lance!" Hunk groans in annoyance.

"I didn't do anything!" Lance protests. "It was probably Keith's fault."

"You always blame Keith," Hunk says tiredly. "Just be more careful, OK? Those eggs weren't cheap."

Hunk is Famine. He's always counting, rationing. He seems to have a magically endless supply of food, even while the world around him starves and dies.

"Pidge, will you come and get this already!" he calls over his shoulder. "It's gonna get cold."

"In a minute," comes the irritable response from behind Shiro. "I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"It can wait. Just finish the line you're on," Hunk says, eyeing the plateful of food sitting on the counter and huffing impatiently.

"I would if you'd stop nagging me!" Pidge snarls. When Shiro turns to look back at her, she's glaring at her computer screen so heatedly, he's amazed it isn't melting.

Pidge is Death. She is cold, pale, detached yet also constant. Shiro has no idea what the computer program that she's working on is supposed to do, but he is starting to suspect that the fact that she hasn't finished it yet might be connected to the fact that the dead no longer seem to stay dead these days.

But _he_ hasn't turned. The infection never spread beyond his right arm. It is now blackened, like charcoal, and he can't feel it at all, but it's not heavy.

It's her, he knows in his gut. Pidge is the reason that he's not dead. There's nothing else living in the cabin, aside from him and the Four. Even the cacti seem to be dead.

-

Sometimes he wonders if any of this is real or if it's all just some kind of elaborate hallucination. Or if, perhaps, this is what passes for the afterlife these days; some kind of strange purgatory. Nothing makes much sense any more. Time seems to be both non-existent and endless.

It has to have been _at least_ a week now that Lance has been searching for his flower crown. It's just a cheap, plastic thing, but has nevertheless been assigned the same level of importance as all of Lance's other possessions. Keith took it, while Lance was sleeping. He has also been deleting random characters and digits from Pidge's code whenever she goes out of sight of her laptop. And whenever Hunk is out of the kitchen, Keith takes the milk out of the refrigerator and just leaves it on the counter. He never drinks any of it. Shiro has borne witness to all of this, but he doesn't quite feel confident enough to say anything to any of them about it. It leaves him feeling complicit; an accomplice.

A few days ago when he awoke and sat up, he found that his right arm remained lying on the couch. Apparently it had detached itself while he was asleep. When he returned to the couch later, the arm was gone, but it didn't seem to matter. He's doing OK. He doesn't want for anything. He never seems to get hungry any more, even whilst watching the Four eat. He has started to forget things. His hazy memory, stretched too thin, is now poked full of holes. Maybe he's just forgotten how to feel hungry?

Keith calls to him to come outside, they're looking at the stars. Cautiously, he makes his way over to the now open front door and steps out onto the wooden porch. He looks up at the sky, but he can't actually see any stars. He can barely even see the moon any more, the sky is so thick with clouds. But the Four are fondly pointing out the constellations, naming their favourites and recounting the myths behind the names. Lance even spots a shooting star.

Hugging his left arm around himself, Shiro makes his way over to stand in their midst, in the space between Keith and Pidge. He looks to his left and then his right. He wonders if maybe... maybe he's exactly where he's supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) If you enjoyed this story, please comment and let me know!  
> 2) Title is from 'It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)' by R.E.M. The full line is _Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline_.  
>  3) I tried to subtly include a few aspects of the Four Horsemen:  
> \- Chair draped in white sheet = white horse  
> \- Elastic hairband is a scaled down version of a slingshot, which is a scaled down version of the original bow  
> \- Flower crown in place of a victor's crown  
> \- Black stove = black horse  
> \- Electronic scale replaces old fashioned metal scales, and rice is weighed instead of grain  
> \- Old grey beanbag + original green Apple iBook = pale horse  
> \- Red motorbike = red horse  
> Amazingly, Keith's knife doesn't make an appearance. I'm sure it's around there somewhere, though.


End file.
